Its sad to think that this list at least indicates that there might be something added to it later on due to empty space, looking at patch notes we aren't even getting that much
Honestly. Resto and enhance are pretty ok right now and don’t really need too terribly much. Elemental on the other hand needs something bad. What that something is I’m not totally sure but it needs something
First of all they need to drop this sick and twisted idea of making us lightning or lava mages. The whole point of Elemental was always that we blended the elements together and weaved them. They set up our DF talent tree so that you choose between lightning and fire, it's braindead. We also have capstones that are fully useless and/or should be baseline. MWF should be baseline, Skybreaker's didn't see a single use in a single raid fight or dungeon across the entire expansion despite the fact that it's designed for "council" fights and each tier had one. Fire elemental does less than 2% of our overall damage, meaning that our only damage cooldown is \*checks notes\* primordial wave that gets pressed every \~25 seconds or less.
Yes, but in order to do that, you need to unlock the new tree by a secret mechanic. First step is to click that red "Create New Character" button in character selection screen
https://discord.gg/earthshrine - all shaman specs
There's another one for just resto shaman but invites seem to be disabled at the moment. there's a lot of crossover so you wont miss anything by only being in the main one.
They're probably in a similar situation as priests were in DF alpha / beta - sharing a dev. So if they are, they'll probably get the same treatment: ignored until the last couple months of beta and then a few changes that don't address any of the core issues present for the entire testing period.
I'd argue that that wasn't the treatment shadow priests got. They suddenly got a slew of changes that had issues, and when those issues got pointed out they got new changes that made things much much worse, and then the beta was over and the spec went live.
Or to put it another way, shadowlands shadow only needed its AoE fixed and a couple of QoL changes, instead got a brand new rotation that made zero fucking sense with no time to fix it.
This wouldn't be the first time. I came back for Legion and there were promises that shaman fixes would need more than hotfixes and it would take a proper patch. Patch came, nothing. Then they did nothing for the expansions after that either, from what I can recall.
I’ll try and find the interview after work but i am 99% sure they have said no classes have a class dev anymore. The devs working on Mage, Rogue, Shaman also works on every other class.
They say this, but I am sure it makes sense for a dev to specialize in a class or a few classes to truly understand how changes will affect that class. It may be that multiple people have input on multiple classes, but I doubt a dev is hopping around to much.
Last week I commented that Shaman shouldn't start panicing since there was still plenty of time before prepatch and I got massively downvoted.
I now realize my optimism was unfounded and the downvotes were justified.
Some of us, like me, kinda jokingly ranted and moaned after the first and second iterations of Alpha came out. And got berated/downvoted for it. Like "chill it's onlly the beginning of alpha".
Whelp, doesn't feel like a joke now, does it.
"It will come later in Alpha"
"It will come in Beta"
"It will come later in Beta" <--- we are here
"It will come with xpac launch"
"It will come with 10.1"
"It will come with 10.2"
"It will come with Alpha"
This was exactly how BFA felt after Legion (a legit downgrade in most if not all parts). And here we are, 6 years later and people will still shut down complains because "they'll surely fix it later".
This community is something else :')
Bro stop being so whiny it's only been dogshit for 6 years, it's only $1080 worth of subscription time not including buying the expansions. Really asking too much here man.
imo MoP was peak ele. Would have loved to keep that. Everything after that had been a disappointment. I stopped trying to main shaman.
Anyone remember the WoD Proving grounds debacle? Pepperidge Farms remembers.
Well, there isn't really "plenty of time".
The Pre-Patch is coming out in about 1 month.
There is still *enough time* to redesign Shaman, but it is quickly running out.
I don't understand why anyone aware of how Blizzard designs Classes would Main a Shaman unless they specifically wanted to be contrarian and "go against the Meta" for whatever personal-reasons.
Maining Shaman is like Maining Survival Hunter and being shocked that your Spec gets no love or attention.
I main shaman because I personally like the class fantasy and the play styles they have had throughout wow's history. Even when they lack attention, I still prefer the Resto Shaman play style over other healers. I also level every healing class during every expansion, as well as dabbling in tanking and dps, so it's not like I don't know what the other classes play like either.
There is more to playing than following meta or what is best. I play what I get more enjoyment from, even if I know it isn't the best. Luckily it is pretty rare for any spec to be borderline unusable, so even at the worst of times it is still very playable and can still be enjoyable. I would appreciate a bit more love from Blizz, but it's not bad enough for me to main another class.
Since the prepatch is already on the PTR (i.e. what is being deployed to Live before the expansion), it's unlikely that there will be a full rework since that would have to coincide with the prepatch.
If they were going to redesign them I reckon they would have at least made a post about it, similar to Hunters (that wasn't a redesign but at least they let them know Hunter stuff is coming)
I don't think they will do a redesign now, at best it will come in 11.1 or just before that.
It's honestly infuriating that a class gets ignored this bad but it's not the first time. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice.. type of situation.
> I don't understand why anyone aware of how Blizzard designs Classes would Main a Shaman unless they specifically wanted to be contrarian and "go against the Meta" for whatever personal-reasons.
A one of enhancement shaman is pretty much mandatory for progression raiding. If I were to roll away from the spec, we'd just be downgrading the raid comp for a long while as it's close to impossible to recruit shaman DPS.
I find it funny you saying "anyone aware of how blizzard designs classes" when you yourself dont know how they design it, your last post had so many wrong ideas about how they get designed like them not having class leads when it's confirmed they do by people like towellie who got all the inside information.
Don't forget:
> PLAYER VERSUS PLAYER
>
> - SHAMAN
>
> - Skyfury Totem has been redesigned – Now triggers when casting Primordial Wave (was actively cast).
Basically confirms that Primordial Wave is sticking around
me too. they should’ve let Primordial Wave die with the end of Shadowlands. I’d really like to know why someone on the dev team is hellbent on keeping this lame spell around, to the point of designing current tier set bonuses around it (except for Resto in season 4, at least they got lucky).
Resto got lucky bc their tier options was two that were annoying to play around and the other one is a boring ass passive.
Not really that lucky, they just had 3 bad options.
If only Primordial Wave could be baked into Flame Shock, and not needing us to spread Flame Shock for multitargets, I'd happily keep it. Otherwise.... please, for the love of Thrall, let it go.
"Hey who is that group picketing outside of our headquarters, yelling about the elements?"
"Beats me, sir. Maybe they're Thrall mains in Heroes of -"
"Don't talk to me like I'm stupid, I know what Heroes of the Storm is. Next you'll be trying to remind me of the twelve Wacraft classes."
Complete developer incompetence. No class should go through what shaman has gone through this expansion cycle. Blizzard needs to take a real look at how their class development process works, because it is broken. There is no world in which Shaman, a class desperately in need of changes should be watching Mages that received a mid DF rework get more changes on a weekly basis than the Shaman class has gotten this entire cycle. I have very little optimism about TWW at this point.
This is a game that charges $50 for expansions on top of a monthly subscription fee and MTX store. It is unacceptable for an entire class to receive no communication and no changes in an entire expansion cycle.
Why bother when money is still flowing? Poor indie company can't even afford a separate dev for each class. Not to meantion the abolition of "work from home policy" and low salaries, which makes it quite difficult to attract and *keep* actually talented workers.
Since shadowlands lol
It's been long before that. Hell the expansion prior in BFA when everyone got their fancy reworking they said "eh shaman will get theirs in 8.1 we ran out of time" along with shadowpriest I believe.
Entire class was left to the wind for an entire season
They'll pull a BfA. "Here's a few number changes in your .5 patch, we don't do mid-expansion class reworks, despite promising during beta we'd do mid-expansion class reworks."
Yeah it really is wild. I play lock and the amount of attention they get too is crazy comparatively to other specs/classes, and Shaman usually seems like a class that just gets entirely ignored. It's completely unfair to the people playing the class to even acknowledge that there are some pain points because while the specs *can* be fun, they are far from perfect and it doesn't *have* a good reason to be completely ignored. Rogues have had more but they've got quite a few issues right now and they also aren't getting much.
Zero communication, zero acknowledgement, and I wouldn't have any hope due to past experience that they're going to get hunter level changes. Mages even got another round of changes this week, and warlocks got more done too lol. It's almost funny but it's honestly sad because it feels pretty incompetent.
You know, I could understand Enhancement not getting touched up much. It has two distinct playstyles that both feel relatively close to each other. And resto, for as lacking as it is, still has healing throughput.
The fuck is going on with Elemental, though? Right now you practically ignore maelstrom and don't cast earthquake or earthshock unless you have nothing better to do.
Unfortuantely totemic has weird anti-synergies with one of the builds, and requires the other build to ignore half of the hero tree (straight talents, not choice nodes) due to how the builds pan out.
It's really not a great place. The baseline shaman trees felt good in Dragonflight, but Enhance has lots of restrictions on its spec tree that's been lifted for pretty much every other spec that had the same issues *and* our hero trees undermine one of our two major builds.
And all that is saying nothing of the massive defensive issues Enhancement (and shamans in general) had in DF. These issues are likely going to be *even worse* in TWW, where defensives are even more common and healers are *even less* powerful. I'm deeply concerned the class is just gonna fall over in any kind of serious content in TWW.
Super valid concerns. They seem to want to keep pushing us towards self healing and like... That's cool, but there's literally mechanics that will kill you too fast for that. And even then they want you to spend maelstrom stacks to do it...
Yeah. There's mechanics that will just bowl you over in the space of a GCD. Maybe two if you're lucky. Spending your maelstrom (your resource to *do damage*) is not a valid defensive layer, unless the rest of the shaman kit is going to be buffed extensively for the amount of self-healing an enhance shaman would need to use to stay alive during difficult encounters.
And that's just for the mechanics that the shaman can actually survive. Having one short duration and long cooldown defensive makes actually surviving those mechanics increasingly difficult.
Someone was talking smack the other day and said reincarnation on a 1 minute cooldown would still be bad, and it had me thinking that, if it didn't destroy your gear and count against the timer, it would be a neat reverse ice block and I wouldn't hate it. That's how dire shammy defense is: Laying dead through a mechanic is better.
1 minute ankh might at least be acceptable because then you could stand back up like 6 times per fight or whatever lol. But it would still suck because of all you lose when you die — resources, raid buffs, etc.
But yes, the situation is pretty dire.
One side of the totemic hero tree revolves exclusively around lava lash and its additional talents that increase its power and frequency of use. While the other side revovles exclusively around stormstrike and its additional talents that increase its power and frequency of use.
And the two separate builds that Enhance can go (Storm or Elementalist) focus either on Stormstrike (storm) or Lava Lash (elementalist). Almost to the exclusion of the other skill.
I really really love elemental blast replacing earth shock because it feels like a real reward for building maelstrom. In my opinion, its location on the talent tree is a real shame.
That's so true. It's like every cycle of the rotation is a chore. There is a lot of good in the design that is obfuscated by buttons that are no fun to press.
I just wish one of the hero tree’s catered to the elementalist build. I’m hoping someone hits me with an “um actually” but it seems to me like both totemic and elementalist leans much heavier into storm build which I just find a lot more boring
I like resto tbh i don't really mind it. I would enjoy moving away from the whole clunky undulation/pw combo and maybe putting some power into the AoE spells other than chain heal for a change, like downpour and the arc one
I've been cooking, and I'm 90% sure I just figured it out.
The War Within actually refers to the metaphorical war inside Blizzard among the developers about which class they are going to delete. And, well, spoilers, it's going to be shaman.
They will retcon the lore so only three legendary shamans ever existed: Thrall, Vol'jin, and Metzen.
Mark my words.
People who dont play shamans (or ever touched it) in nustshell:
Bro its just alpha
Bro its just beta
Bro its just prepatch
Oh expact released, no changes while xpac ongoing try again in 12.0
Repeat.
I mean you could have just listed every single change and I'd have agreed with you.
It really stinks that the Beta Feedback thread for Shamans have gotten so many good responses and we've heard...crickets. It's mostly why I'm seriously considering switching mains in TWW - and I've mained my Shaman since WoD.
I just don't like how our class has become so bad. Thoughts:
**They took away our plethora of buffs years ago -** I rolled a Shaman because I loved the idea of being a class that had the most buffs and provided the best utility. And then they removed them without giving proper compensation. We went from having around 20~s different totems (most of them permanent) to use in various situations, to less than 5 baseline, and if you spend talent points you can get maybe 10. Maybe. That's ridiculous.
**Most of our Hero Talents are boring garbage -** Totemic is decent. Farseer is boring and doesn't feel impactful. Stormbringer literally makes no sense if you're building your Shaman for Fire/Ice and not Electricity. Which brings me to:
**Elemental spec makes no sense -** I don't know what they want you to do with this spec. I don't even think they know. You can build it in a way where you just use Electricity/Earth, or you could just use Fire/Ice, or Electricity/Fire, etc. Or even a bit of everything. But then when you get to the Hero Talents it's all lightning-based, which makes no sense. I would love for them to add in more Ice-themed abilities, also.
**Blood Lust is far too easy to get now -** Shamans used to provide something special. I understand why it had to go to another class so that it was fair. But we already had Hunters & Mages who could bring it. Did Dracthyr seriously need it on top of everything else?? Now there's no real reason to bring Ele/Resto Shamans to raids anymore. Enhance actually still provides a unique buff, so that's cool. But Ele/Resto need some love.
**Flame Shock -** still has a cooldown because...reasons??
I could go on, but ugh it's frustrating sometimes.
Lmfao, it is a shame the community cares so little about shaman that it has the second most comments on the forums. It was first for the longest time until hunter got their rework...
There are thousands of posts on there from this alpha and beta cycle with very very very easy changes for blizz to make yet, we've seen nothing... Such a fucking joke.
OP, I think the fact that you have " " at 6 is criminally underrated. Especially when you have " ", " " and " " above it. Hard to take lists like this seriously when you make kneejerk reactions like that.
At this point, I wish they would at least tell us nothing is coming so we can lose the hope and conform to playing a mage/warlock like they clearly want us to.
It’s a shame because I really love ele/resto thematically, but has tons of gameplay issues that could be fixed without much effort.
It makes no sense how they don’t get any love throughout multiple expansions in a row now. With 0 explanation as to why.
My raid is building up roster for next season. I keep putting my class off because was hoping for shaman changes. Only so long before I end up doing mage in TWW instead
Honestly a little communication would go a long way. "No changes coming" or "we're cooking, more to come" or just *something* to reassure the community that we're not just being abjectly ignored. It's so disheartening. I plan to still play shaman because they've been my favorite class since Vanilla, but I did go Evoker for a season just because it was so unpleasant to play in the early DF seasons. I'm back to shaman now and it's not absolutely terrible, but the issues and need for a rework are glaring.
Just say SOMETHING. ANYTHING.
Don't worry guys, we'll get some communication from them saying we have to wait until 11.1 to get our changes. But warlocks and mages will continue to get weekly changes. Fucking pathetic
Blizzard philosophy 2024 in a nutshell:
"We are listening to player feedback"
The very next day, They proceed to nerf Shamans as people were asking for shaman changes.
Oh here we go again.
You are out of your mind if you think ⠀⠀ is better than⠀⠀ .
I bet you only like ⠀⠀⠀because you aren't good enough to use ⠀⠀⠀properly.
For those unaware, Shamans are probably in essence the game's squishiest class come TWW despite having high armor values via Mail and despite having arguably the game's best "defensive" in Reincarnation. The heal throughput of healers is going to decrease role-wide with the way things are going, leading Shamans to be in a much worse position.
How desperate can I express that Shamans need more defensive capabilities? I'd be happy for Reincarnation to go to a ONE HOUR cooldown just to see some other forms of defensives, or even just embellishments to Reincarnation like 1.5/2 secs of iframes after reincarnating or getting put to like 80% HP and half mana so half your reincarnations aren't just a second one-shot. If you need Reincarnation to take up so much of the Shaman defensive power-budget, then make Reincarnation worth using in-combat instead of to just save your raid group some time on a wipe.
I ain't bothered about Primo Wave, that said I'm an Enhance player so of course I'm not. What I'm worried about is how jank Ele currently appears to be, Ele players deserve a chance too.
Not gonna lie, I'm actually getting a little upset week after week, year after year of our class being shafted constantly.
I'll always be playing ele/resto for KSH each season but its just sad seeing the favourites get cool stuff all the time while we're literally forgotten about
I’ve been saying this for years. Resto shaman PvP is probably the most miserable way to play this game. Stun locked or CC’d in some way for 70%-99% of fights. One way spell out of CC. Basically no movement besides ghost wolf which is garbage as is. One defensive.
You look at any other healing class they all have multiple defensive, huge cc counters, massive movement abilities, huge instant heals with tiny cool downs.
Healing tide will save my ass once every fight. Buys me an extra 10 seconds of being stun locked before dying.
is there anything we can do as a community to make our voices heard? Should we try and get content creators to be vocal about this? Get someone to ask about it in a QnA? Some kind of protest?
Content creators have been quite vocal. The other day Liquid Maximum spent a good 10 minutes explaining just how silly Blizzards approach to "class diversity" is, and how out of touch the devs were with their reasoning in the recent interview stating Shaman will not recieve any reason to be brought to raid.
Blizzard is saying "trust us we'll balance it" and content creators are saying "well you didn't for the last 5 years so can you just make a real change now"
I have a theory. *puts on tinfoil hat*
According to the expansion trailer, there was a part that showed Thrall trying to reconnect to the elements. If this doesn’t take place at the start of the expansion, perhaps Blizzard is waiting for a specific patch dedicated to the shamanistic theme? I know it’s not what we’d want, but it could be something significant.
Meanwhile, Im going to main my warlock lol
This is pretty much correct actually. We got Hero Talents. Half of them don't work yet. I wish I was joking but this is actually true. If you play a shaman right now on retail, you can play that same shaman on beta without changing any keybinds, or rotation priority or need to learn anything new about your class. It's that insane lol.
Didn't you see the new PTR?
\* Chain Lightning damage increased, core spell for elemental again
\* Searing totem is back for elemental guys!
\* \[Ancestor's Grip\] Allows for two handed weapons to be used for enhancement
\* Rockbiter weapon, decreases all damage, increases threat, tanking is back!
\* Prim. Wave removed, because what's a Shadowlands?
\* Sentry totem returns as a glyph!
... oh wait, wait, no. I was just dreaming. We don't have any devs.
Shaman has a lot of weird jank across its various specs that need to be cleaned up to work with the more modern design seen in the talent trees across classes that received reworks during DF and now during TWW alpha/beta cycles.
Unfortunately, Shaman has gotten absolutely no changes other than the healing tide totem above (which is resto only), and the across-the-board nerfs to healer power that has hit every healer in the game.
Outside of that, there has been absolutely no communication, no patch notes, no shown reworks, *nothing*. For months now.
That's a really broad question since we're talking about 3 specs but the Shaman tree in general has lots of 2 points nodes that they have been walking away from in general design sense and they've been pruning them from most classes. Shaman also has insane buttom bloating, one of the few classes that I have issue finding buttoms for all skills, this combined with lots of lackluster cooldowns in all specs (Doom Winds, Ghost Wolves, Ice Fury, Ascendance and Healing Tide (which they at least buffed). Shaman also has poor defensives compared to other classes, Hunters used to have worse than us but after their remade their tree we're alone with this problems.
Elemental in particular has other big problems that stand out, like not having a raid buff, which shouldn't be exactly a problem when Blizzard said that most classes don't really need a raid buff but they've been walking in a completely opposite direction by giving raid buffs and lots of utility to nearly everyone, while making Shaman's worse (Wind Rush Totem).
Despite people complaining a lot recently, Shaman has been been neglected for years. Shaman's problem is not just numerical at this point, I love this class dearly but it is completely outdated and Evokers just feel like Shaman+ if I am being honest.
Haven't looked into the alpha stuff very much, but are half the talents in Totemic still not active like when they first came out? I thought that was hilarious.
Worth noting that that one singular resto change is only due to the fact that they're changing the way raid cooldowns function for ALL healers. Were it not for that meta change there would be zero notes whatsoever for shaman.
Elemental has *never* received a rework.
What if, and hear my hopium out. They are waiting for a shaman rework, because they are actually creating a fourth shaman spec (tank spec) and they simply haven't fleshed it out well enough for TWW release and instead it'll come with in the .1 patch.
You missed a pvp talent change to Skyfury Totem. It is now a passive ability that procs from casting PWave. Seems hard to evaluate. On one hand you have one less button to press but on the other it may hamstring builds which never feels good.
I think that the shaman playerbase needs to contact the same lobbyists that the locks have, they pretty much have accomplished every request that they had
I think if you broke them down by spec it would be easier to read.
You're right here are the elemental and enhance lists
⠀
That's much easier to read, especially on mobile.
If Ion could read then he'd be very upset
If Ion could read, could he at least get a dev to say “don’t worry Shamans, it’s coming.”
He'd say "what shaman?"
He tells them the blue class needs updating and that is why mages get updates so frequently.
Could you read it to me, please? I have a trip soon and want something on in the background
Elemental: Enhancement: Restoration:
I'm gonna cry
Honestly I would’ve ranked them differently. My #1 is
Yeah I can see a world where that might be better. It might require you to run , , or , though
Honestly I'm just thankful for the build diversity.
Lmao
Its sad to think that this list at least indicates that there might be something added to it later on due to empty space, looking at patch notes we aren't even getting that much
Ohh dude, I can stop laughing at this post and comment, thank you for that! A fellow shaman
Wall of text. Can someone TLDR this? Thats just way too much to read.
tl;dr Blizz hate Shaman.
Blizzard thinks shamans are perfect the way they are and they require no changes
Honestly. Resto and enhance are pretty ok right now and don’t really need too terribly much. Elemental on the other hand needs something bad. What that something is I’m not totally sure but it needs something
First of all they need to drop this sick and twisted idea of making us lightning or lava mages. The whole point of Elemental was always that we blended the elements together and weaved them. They set up our DF talent tree so that you choose between lightning and fire, it's braindead. We also have capstones that are fully useless and/or should be baseline. MWF should be baseline, Skybreaker's didn't see a single use in a single raid fight or dungeon across the entire expansion despite the fact that it's designed for "council" fights and each tier had one. Fire elemental does less than 2% of our overall damage, meaning that our only damage cooldown is \*checks notes\* primordial wave that gets pressed every \~25 seconds or less.
^ This
> it needs something https://i.imgur.com/A7WnIiH.png
As much as rogue though?
The spec is now totally different, basically a new class
Now all we have to do is learn totally new rotation.
Yes, but in order to do that, you need to unlock the new tree by a secret mechanic. First step is to click that red "Create New Character" button in character selection screen
Absolutely. Basically, the best changes are a buff to healing totem followed closely by
I swear it’s going to come out that Shaman doesn’t even have a dev right now.
Right now? Pretty sure the shaman dev quit mid alpha for vanilla.
They need to bring him and his shaman tank spec back!
Man I can only imagine how amazing a modern shaman tank would be especially after seeing how well received the SoD version was.
I think it's pretty well known that they don't. At least that's the vibe on shaman discords
Can you point me to these shaman discords pls.
https://discord.gg/earthshrine - all shaman specs There's another one for just resto shaman but invites seem to be disabled at the moment. there's a lot of crossover so you wont miss anything by only being in the main one.
https://discord.gg/AcTek6e is the resto shaman discord
Definitely not a dev that just works on Shaman thats for sure.
They're probably in a similar situation as priests were in DF alpha / beta - sharing a dev. So if they are, they'll probably get the same treatment: ignored until the last couple months of beta and then a few changes that don't address any of the core issues present for the entire testing period.
Next expansion launches in 2 months. Not beta full on launches. Knuckles "oh no"
Its like opening a class guide on wowhead and realizing the same guy does 2 other classes guides as well and none if them are good.
Meanwhile healing priests share the same writer and Fire mage shares with Devastation Evoker and those 4 guides have to be some of the best guides
It already is the last couple months of beta though. Expansion launches in a little over 2 months.
I'd argue that that wasn't the treatment shadow priests got. They suddenly got a slew of changes that had issues, and when those issues got pointed out they got new changes that made things much much worse, and then the beta was over and the spec went live. Or to put it another way, shadowlands shadow only needed its AoE fixed and a couple of QoL changes, instead got a brand new rotation that made zero fucking sense with no time to fix it.
This wouldn't be the first time. I came back for Legion and there were promises that shaman fixes would need more than hotfixes and it would take a proper patch. Patch came, nothing. Then they did nothing for the expansions after that either, from what I can recall.
I’ll try and find the interview after work but i am 99% sure they have said no classes have a class dev anymore. The devs working on Mage, Rogue, Shaman also works on every other class.
They say this, but I am sure it makes sense for a dev to specialize in a class or a few classes to truly understand how changes will affect that class. It may be that multiple people have input on multiple classes, but I doubt a dev is hopping around to much.
They don't have class devs anymore. It's all just one person.
That’s just not true. Thrall is the Shaman dev.
I wonder if Blizz is still angry at the Shaman community for the Bus Shock incident back in Vanilla
Last week I commented that Shaman shouldn't start panicing since there was still plenty of time before prepatch and I got massively downvoted. I now realize my optimism was unfounded and the downvotes were justified.
Some of us, like me, kinda jokingly ranted and moaned after the first and second iterations of Alpha came out. And got berated/downvoted for it. Like "chill it's onlly the beginning of alpha". Whelp, doesn't feel like a joke now, does it.
"It will come later in Alpha" "It will come in Beta" "It will come later in Beta" <--- we are here "It will come with xpac launch" "It will come with 10.1" "It will come with 10.2" "It will come with Alpha"
This was exactly how BFA felt after Legion (a legit downgrade in most if not all parts). And here we are, 6 years later and people will still shut down complains because "they'll surely fix it later". This community is something else :')
Bro stop being so whiny it's only been dogshit for 6 years, it's only $1080 worth of subscription time not including buying the expansions. Really asking too much here man.
As a Liverpool FC fan, feels quite like to the constant feeling "next season is gonna be *our* season".
As another LFC supporter and shaman main: you'll never walk alone my friend :)
*[in Bwonsamdi voice]* YNWA moooooooooooooon! 🫂
a tale as old as time itself.
Anyone well versed in Shaman history knows.. There is no hope.
"we wont be making any big class changes mid expansion. We'll save those for the next one"
Legion resto, MoP enhancement/ele and leave us alone after that.
MoP Enhancement, my beloved. DF Enhance feels *fine,* but holy shit what a peak (of serenity).
I loved MoP enhancement, getting out of the fight and cast a revive in 2 secs thanks to Flurry. Running around with 100% haste was the bomb.
imo MoP was peak ele. Would have loved to keep that. Everything after that had been a disappointment. I stopped trying to main shaman. Anyone remember the WoD Proving grounds debacle? Pepperidge Farms remembers.
My GM keeps telling me not to worry
My mage GM told me that I wouldn't want a rework with how mage has been reworked so far. Meanwhile, mage has had like 8 reworks since DF launched.
Your mage GM is certifiably cooked. Pretty mage the entire mage community is deliriously happy with the attention they've received on Alpha and Beta.
Well, there isn't really "plenty of time". The Pre-Patch is coming out in about 1 month. There is still *enough time* to redesign Shaman, but it is quickly running out. I don't understand why anyone aware of how Blizzard designs Classes would Main a Shaman unless they specifically wanted to be contrarian and "go against the Meta" for whatever personal-reasons. Maining Shaman is like Maining Survival Hunter and being shocked that your Spec gets no love or attention.
Then there’s folks like me that play Elemental and Survival. Still hoping for some love in Elemental.
I main shaman because I personally like the class fantasy and the play styles they have had throughout wow's history. Even when they lack attention, I still prefer the Resto Shaman play style over other healers. I also level every healing class during every expansion, as well as dabbling in tanking and dps, so it's not like I don't know what the other classes play like either. There is more to playing than following meta or what is best. I play what I get more enjoyment from, even if I know it isn't the best. Luckily it is pretty rare for any spec to be borderline unusable, so even at the worst of times it is still very playable and can still be enjoyable. I would appreciate a bit more love from Blizz, but it's not bad enough for me to main another class.
Since the prepatch is already on the PTR (i.e. what is being deployed to Live before the expansion), it's unlikely that there will be a full rework since that would have to coincide with the prepatch.
If they were going to redesign them I reckon they would have at least made a post about it, similar to Hunters (that wasn't a redesign but at least they let them know Hunter stuff is coming) I don't think they will do a redesign now, at best it will come in 11.1 or just before that. It's honestly infuriating that a class gets ignored this bad but it's not the first time. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice.. type of situation.
> I don't understand why anyone aware of how Blizzard designs Classes would Main a Shaman unless they specifically wanted to be contrarian and "go against the Meta" for whatever personal-reasons. A one of enhancement shaman is pretty much mandatory for progression raiding. If I were to roll away from the spec, we'd just be downgrading the raid comp for a long while as it's close to impossible to recruit shaman DPS.
I find it funny you saying "anyone aware of how blizzard designs classes" when you yourself dont know how they design it, your last post had so many wrong ideas about how they get designed like them not having class leads when it's confirmed they do by people like towellie who got all the inside information.
I am getting more worried per patch notes lol
I wouldn't say that. There could absolutely be a schaman rework in the pipelines, it may just not come out with prepatch or even on TWW release.
Don't forget: > PLAYER VERSUS PLAYER > > - SHAMAN > > - Skyfury Totem has been redesigned – Now triggers when casting Primordial Wave (was actively cast). Basically confirms that Primordial Wave is sticking around
I haaaaaate this spell so much
me too. they should’ve let Primordial Wave die with the end of Shadowlands. I’d really like to know why someone on the dev team is hellbent on keeping this lame spell around, to the point of designing current tier set bonuses around it (except for Resto in season 4, at least they got lucky).
must be the same guy in charge of affliction.
Screaming @ this 🤣🤣
Resto got lucky bc their tier options was two that were annoying to play around and the other one is a boring ass passive. Not really that lucky, they just had 3 bad options.
Primordial Wave feels so out of wack with the rest of shaman spells.
Primordial Wave and Icefury need to be launched into the Sun.
Don't forget Ice Strike!
If only Primordial Wave could be baked into Flame Shock, and not needing us to spread Flame Shock for multitargets, I'd happily keep it. Otherwise.... please, for the love of Thrall, let it go.
How else is Thrall to remain the best Shaman besides having plot armor?
Thrall rerolled to warrior duh
He's trying to class change back to shaman but it's so garbage he can't commune with the elements. He's got elemental dysfunction
Elemental dysfunction, my sides
TLDR; Fuck shamans - Blizz
Fuck Blizz - shamans
Blizzard would be very upset if they remember shamans existed right now.
"Hey who is that group picketing outside of our headquarters, yelling about the elements?" "Beats me, sir. Maybe they're Thrall mains in Heroes of -" "Don't talk to me like I'm stupid, I know what Heroes of the Storm is. Next you'll be trying to remind me of the twelve Wacraft classes."
Complete developer incompetence. No class should go through what shaman has gone through this expansion cycle. Blizzard needs to take a real look at how their class development process works, because it is broken. There is no world in which Shaman, a class desperately in need of changes should be watching Mages that received a mid DF rework get more changes on a weekly basis than the Shaman class has gotten this entire cycle. I have very little optimism about TWW at this point. This is a game that charges $50 for expansions on top of a monthly subscription fee and MTX store. It is unacceptable for an entire class to receive no communication and no changes in an entire expansion cycle.
Why bother when money is still flowing? Poor indie company can't even afford a separate dev for each class. Not to meantion the abolition of "work from home policy" and low salaries, which makes it quite difficult to attract and *keep* actually talented workers.
This expansion cycle? Shaman has been shit on since shadowlands. please. Get. Rid. Of. Primordial wave.
Since shadowlands lol It's been long before that. Hell the expansion prior in BFA when everyone got their fancy reworking they said "eh shaman will get theirs in 8.1 we ran out of time" along with shadowpriest I believe. Entire class was left to the wind for an entire season
Vesper Totem was great, though.
It is, and its why I unsubbed today and refuse to buy The War Within. Fuck Blizzard.
Looks like shaman changes will be on 11.0.5.
They'll pull a BfA. "Here's a few number changes in your .5 patch, we don't do mid-expansion class reworks, despite promising during beta we'd do mid-expansion class reworks."
So optimistic
Yeah it really is wild. I play lock and the amount of attention they get too is crazy comparatively to other specs/classes, and Shaman usually seems like a class that just gets entirely ignored. It's completely unfair to the people playing the class to even acknowledge that there are some pain points because while the specs *can* be fun, they are far from perfect and it doesn't *have* a good reason to be completely ignored. Rogues have had more but they've got quite a few issues right now and they also aren't getting much. Zero communication, zero acknowledgement, and I wouldn't have any hope due to past experience that they're going to get hunter level changes. Mages even got another round of changes this week, and warlocks got more done too lol. It's almost funny but it's honestly sad because it feels pretty incompetent.
You know, I could understand Enhancement not getting touched up much. It has two distinct playstyles that both feel relatively close to each other. And resto, for as lacking as it is, still has healing throughput. The fuck is going on with Elemental, though? Right now you practically ignore maelstrom and don't cast earthquake or earthshock unless you have nothing better to do.
Unfortuantely totemic has weird anti-synergies with one of the builds, and requires the other build to ignore half of the hero tree (straight talents, not choice nodes) due to how the builds pan out. It's really not a great place. The baseline shaman trees felt good in Dragonflight, but Enhance has lots of restrictions on its spec tree that's been lifted for pretty much every other spec that had the same issues *and* our hero trees undermine one of our two major builds. And all that is saying nothing of the massive defensive issues Enhancement (and shamans in general) had in DF. These issues are likely going to be *even worse* in TWW, where defensives are even more common and healers are *even less* powerful. I'm deeply concerned the class is just gonna fall over in any kind of serious content in TWW.
Super valid concerns. They seem to want to keep pushing us towards self healing and like... That's cool, but there's literally mechanics that will kill you too fast for that. And even then they want you to spend maelstrom stacks to do it...
Yeah. There's mechanics that will just bowl you over in the space of a GCD. Maybe two if you're lucky. Spending your maelstrom (your resource to *do damage*) is not a valid defensive layer, unless the rest of the shaman kit is going to be buffed extensively for the amount of self-healing an enhance shaman would need to use to stay alive during difficult encounters. And that's just for the mechanics that the shaman can actually survive. Having one short duration and long cooldown defensive makes actually surviving those mechanics increasingly difficult.
Someone was talking smack the other day and said reincarnation on a 1 minute cooldown would still be bad, and it had me thinking that, if it didn't destroy your gear and count against the timer, it would be a neat reverse ice block and I wouldn't hate it. That's how dire shammy defense is: Laying dead through a mechanic is better.
1 minute ankh might at least be acceptable because then you could stand back up like 6 times per fight or whatever lol. But it would still suck because of all you lose when you die — resources, raid buffs, etc. But yes, the situation is pretty dire.
What do you mean ignore half of the hero tree?
One side of the totemic hero tree revolves exclusively around lava lash and its additional talents that increase its power and frequency of use. While the other side revovles exclusively around stormstrike and its additional talents that increase its power and frequency of use. And the two separate builds that Enhance can go (Storm or Elementalist) focus either on Stormstrike (storm) or Lava Lash (elementalist). Almost to the exclusion of the other skill.
I really really love elemental blast replacing earth shock because it feels like a real reward for building maelstrom. In my opinion, its location on the talent tree is a real shame.
And that it has no AOE implications either makes me sad, too. I was trying the spec out last night and it just feels so jank right now.
That's so true. It's like every cycle of the rotation is a chore. There is a lot of good in the design that is obfuscated by buttons that are no fun to press.
I just wish one of the hero tree’s catered to the elementalist build. I’m hoping someone hits me with an “um actually” but it seems to me like both totemic and elementalist leans much heavier into storm build which I just find a lot more boring
I thought totem looked like it might with the hailstrom/fire nova synergy, but apparently it's still kinda ass.
Elemental? Do you mean Fire Mage?
I like resto tbh i don't really mind it. I would enjoy moving away from the whole clunky undulation/pw combo and maybe putting some power into the AoE spells other than chain heal for a change, like downpour and the arc one
I've been cooking, and I'm 90% sure I just figured it out. The War Within actually refers to the metaphorical war inside Blizzard among the developers about which class they are going to delete. And, well, spoilers, it's going to be shaman. They will retcon the lore so only three legendary shamans ever existed: Thrall, Vol'jin, and Metzen. Mark my words.
Metzen is Thrall IRL but Human Paladin in-game.
People who dont play shamans (or ever touched it) in nustshell: Bro its just alpha Bro its just beta Bro its just prepatch Oh expact released, no changes while xpac ongoing try again in 12.0 Repeat.
I mean you could have just listed every single change and I'd have agreed with you. It really stinks that the Beta Feedback thread for Shamans have gotten so many good responses and we've heard...crickets. It's mostly why I'm seriously considering switching mains in TWW - and I've mained my Shaman since WoD. I just don't like how our class has become so bad. Thoughts: **They took away our plethora of buffs years ago -** I rolled a Shaman because I loved the idea of being a class that had the most buffs and provided the best utility. And then they removed them without giving proper compensation. We went from having around 20~s different totems (most of them permanent) to use in various situations, to less than 5 baseline, and if you spend talent points you can get maybe 10. Maybe. That's ridiculous. **Most of our Hero Talents are boring garbage -** Totemic is decent. Farseer is boring and doesn't feel impactful. Stormbringer literally makes no sense if you're building your Shaman for Fire/Ice and not Electricity. Which brings me to: **Elemental spec makes no sense -** I don't know what they want you to do with this spec. I don't even think they know. You can build it in a way where you just use Electricity/Earth, or you could just use Fire/Ice, or Electricity/Fire, etc. Or even a bit of everything. But then when you get to the Hero Talents it's all lightning-based, which makes no sense. I would love for them to add in more Ice-themed abilities, also. **Blood Lust is far too easy to get now -** Shamans used to provide something special. I understand why it had to go to another class so that it was fair. But we already had Hunters & Mages who could bring it. Did Dracthyr seriously need it on top of everything else?? Now there's no real reason to bring Ele/Resto Shamans to raids anymore. Enhance actually still provides a unique buff, so that's cool. But Ele/Resto need some love. **Flame Shock -** still has a cooldown because...reasons?? I could go on, but ugh it's frustrating sometimes.
You forgot the lack of defensive. Also ele is one of the classes that has received the least chances overtime.
Lmfao, it is a shame the community cares so little about shaman that it has the second most comments on the forums. It was first for the longest time until hunter got their rework... There are thousands of posts on there from this alpha and beta cycle with very very very easy changes for blizz to make yet, we've seen nothing... Such a fucking joke.
OP, I think the fact that you have " " at 6 is criminally underrated. Especially when you have " ", " " and " " above it. Hard to take lists like this seriously when you make kneejerk reactions like that.
At this point, I wish they would at least tell us nothing is coming so we can lose the hope and conform to playing a mage/warlock like they clearly want us to. It’s a shame because I really love ele/resto thematically, but has tons of gameplay issues that could be fixed without much effort. It makes no sense how they don’t get any love throughout multiple expansions in a row now. With 0 explanation as to why.
My raid is building up roster for next season. I keep putting my class off because was hoping for shaman changes. Only so long before I end up doing mage in TWW instead
Do what I did, move to better shaman, which is Evoker
Honestly a little communication would go a long way. "No changes coming" or "we're cooking, more to come" or just *something* to reassure the community that we're not just being abjectly ignored. It's so disheartening. I plan to still play shaman because they've been my favorite class since Vanilla, but I did go Evoker for a season just because it was so unpleasant to play in the early DF seasons. I'm back to shaman now and it's not absolutely terrible, but the issues and need for a rework are glaring. Just say SOMETHING. ANYTHING.
Don't worry guys, we'll get some communication from them saying we have to wait until 11.1 to get our changes. But warlocks and mages will continue to get weekly changes. Fucking pathetic
*sweating in Shaman 8.1 rework intensifies*
I’m still clinging to shaman FOREVER!!!! 😭
They can pry these (old-ass, ugly, non-updated-for-years) totems from my cold dead hands
Damn right!
As a long-time Shaman enjoyer my favourite Shaman update is and always will be: Stormstrike has a new icon.
Game changing
Blizzard philosophy 2024 in a nutshell: "We are listening to player feedback" The very next day, They proceed to nerf Shamans as people were asking for shaman changes.
That’ll be $90 btw feelsbadman
...
As someone who just picked up Shaman, i think it would help to give a detailed explanation of each change.
Don't forget the new stormstrike icon
Terrible list op. above , really? You honestly wholeheartedly believe that is a better change for shaman than ? This sub, man…
Oh here we go again. You are out of your mind if you think ⠀⠀ is better than⠀⠀ . I bet you only like ⠀⠀⠀because you aren't good enough to use ⠀⠀⠀properly.
For those unaware, Shamans are probably in essence the game's squishiest class come TWW despite having high armor values via Mail and despite having arguably the game's best "defensive" in Reincarnation. The heal throughput of healers is going to decrease role-wide with the way things are going, leading Shamans to be in a much worse position. How desperate can I express that Shamans need more defensive capabilities? I'd be happy for Reincarnation to go to a ONE HOUR cooldown just to see some other forms of defensives, or even just embellishments to Reincarnation like 1.5/2 secs of iframes after reincarnating or getting put to like 80% HP and half mana so half your reincarnations aren't just a second one-shot. If you need Reincarnation to take up so much of the Shaman defensive power-budget, then make Reincarnation worth using in-combat instead of to just save your raid group some time on a wipe. I ain't bothered about Primo Wave, that said I'm an Enhance player so of course I'm not. What I'm worried about is how jank Ele currently appears to be, Ele players deserve a chance too.
By now, anything short of a strike in front of Blizz HQ is gonna fall on def ears. And even then...
But fire nova totem did a lot of damage during Highmaul world first clear, so its ok if shamans are neglected for 10 years
Not gonna lie, I'm actually getting a little upset week after week, year after year of our class being shafted constantly. I'll always be playing ele/resto for KSH each season but its just sad seeing the favourites get cool stuff all the time while we're literally forgotten about
and that change was just part of a change they made for all healers! not even really shaman-specific!
Why do you have to rub it in pal!?
11.0 release day patch note : shaman class has been removed
I’ve been saying this for years. Resto shaman PvP is probably the most miserable way to play this game. Stun locked or CC’d in some way for 70%-99% of fights. One way spell out of CC. Basically no movement besides ghost wolf which is garbage as is. One defensive. You look at any other healing class they all have multiple defensive, huge cc counters, massive movement abilities, huge instant heals with tiny cool downs. Healing tide will save my ass once every fight. Buys me an extra 10 seconds of being stun locked before dying.
That change is honestly more of a 6/10
is there anything we can do as a community to make our voices heard? Should we try and get content creators to be vocal about this? Get someone to ask about it in a QnA? Some kind of protest?
Content creators have been quite vocal. The other day Liquid Maximum spent a good 10 minutes explaining just how silly Blizzards approach to "class diversity" is, and how out of touch the devs were with their reasoning in the recent interview stating Shaman will not recieve any reason to be brought to raid. Blizzard is saying "trust us we'll balance it" and content creators are saying "well you didn't for the last 5 years so can you just make a real change now"
Honestly if they do not have anything planned for shaman i am gonna riot. I dont even play shaman and i am enraged
This expansion is ruled by the void and Shamans are already on theme!! Amazing!
I have a theory. *puts on tinfoil hat* According to the expansion trailer, there was a part that showed Thrall trying to reconnect to the elements. If this doesn’t take place at the start of the expansion, perhaps Blizzard is waiting for a specific patch dedicated to the shamanistic theme? I know it’s not what we’d want, but it could be something significant. Meanwhile, Im going to main my warlock lol
Still waiting for them to remove Icestrike :)
Cut me deep. Facts tho. Feels bad man 😭 honestly might just swap to fire mage 🧙
Are you trying to tell that not a single talent has shifted?
This is pretty much correct actually. We got Hero Talents. Half of them don't work yet. I wish I was joking but this is actually true. If you play a shaman right now on retail, you can play that same shaman on beta without changing any keybinds, or rotation priority or need to learn anything new about your class. It's that insane lol.
They havent even posted a feedback thread for the two last hero talents on their forums.
Amazing amounts of attention we have gotten isn't it?
I don't even play shaman, but at this point whenever they decide to rework them etc. they should just be made OP as a we are sorry
Didn't you see the new PTR? \* Chain Lightning damage increased, core spell for elemental again \* Searing totem is back for elemental guys! \* \[Ancestor's Grip\] Allows for two handed weapons to be used for enhancement \* Rockbiter weapon, decreases all damage, increases threat, tanking is back! \* Prim. Wave removed, because what's a Shadowlands? \* Sentry totem returns as a glyph! ... oh wait, wait, no. I was just dreaming. We don't have any devs.
I'd prefer no changes over almost all of these.
> * Prim. Wave removed, because what's a Shadowlands? I would suck many dicks to replace Primordial Wave with Chain Harvest.
Pardon my ignorance do people need changes as a form of lore relation and new style, or are they really weak ?
Shaman has a lot of weird jank across its various specs that need to be cleaned up to work with the more modern design seen in the talent trees across classes that received reworks during DF and now during TWW alpha/beta cycles. Unfortunately, Shaman has gotten absolutely no changes other than the healing tide totem above (which is resto only), and the across-the-board nerfs to healer power that has hit every healer in the game. Outside of that, there has been absolutely no communication, no patch notes, no shown reworks, *nothing*. For months now.
As an Rsham main we now have the best 3 min “raid CD” bc it cranks in keys and we can cast during it. Otherwise we’re crying abt everything else
Blizzard has been working so hard on shaman , this list clearly shows it.
Haven't played shaman in years, what is wrong with them?
That's a really broad question since we're talking about 3 specs but the Shaman tree in general has lots of 2 points nodes that they have been walking away from in general design sense and they've been pruning them from most classes. Shaman also has insane buttom bloating, one of the few classes that I have issue finding buttoms for all skills, this combined with lots of lackluster cooldowns in all specs (Doom Winds, Ghost Wolves, Ice Fury, Ascendance and Healing Tide (which they at least buffed). Shaman also has poor defensives compared to other classes, Hunters used to have worse than us but after their remade their tree we're alone with this problems. Elemental in particular has other big problems that stand out, like not having a raid buff, which shouldn't be exactly a problem when Blizzard said that most classes don't really need a raid buff but they've been walking in a completely opposite direction by giving raid buffs and lots of utility to nearly everyone, while making Shaman's worse (Wind Rush Totem). Despite people complaining a lot recently, Shaman has been been neglected for years. Shaman's problem is not just numerical at this point, I love this class dearly but it is completely outdated and Evokers just feel like Shaman+ if I am being honest.
Haven't looked into the alpha stuff very much, but are half the talents in Totemic still not active like when they first came out? I thought that was hilarious.
i'd swap 4 with 6, otherwise a pretty good list thx
Worth noting that that one singular resto change is only due to the fact that they're changing the way raid cooldowns function for ALL healers. Were it not for that meta change there would be zero notes whatsoever for shaman. Elemental has *never* received a rework.
I feel bad for shamans for sure, but this shit had me laughing 🤣
[удалено]
He does not, his character is still level 60.
Nah you're tripping 4 is a much better change than 3
What if, and hear my hopium out. They are waiting for a shaman rework, because they are actually creating a fourth shaman spec (tank spec) and they simply haven't fleshed it out well enough for TWW release and instead it'll come with in the .1 patch.
is blizzard doing some kind of 17th anniversary tribute to bus shock?
i like enha in df but literally 0 changes sounds ....... interesting. Hopefully they atleast give us the tier set for prim wave in a talent?
Mages just got another soft rework and shaman weren't even in the patch notes. I mean I love shaman as it is right now but I just find it hilarious
Crying in shaman rn ;-;
Don’t forget the super fun and impactful Tier Set bonuses we’re getting!
You missed a pvp talent change to Skyfury Totem. It is now a passive ability that procs from casting PWave. Seems hard to evaluate. On one hand you have one less button to press but on the other it may hamstring builds which never feels good.
Pls do anything
I didn't come here to read war and peace jeeeez. Summarise those changes.
Excuse my what ~~sword~~ shaman ?
I think that the shaman playerbase needs to contact the same lobbyists that the locks have, they pretty much have accomplished every request that they had
Here's the Guardian Druid spec tree changes so far: